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President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics
Dec. 5 told the Senate labor committee he will ensure the data-collecting agency remains
nonpartisan.

“If confirmed, I will work hard to advance the integrity of the bureau, continue its
legacy as a pre-eminent source for public data, and maintain the neutrality and objectivity
that is indispensable to our nation’s growing economy,” William Beach, a conservative
economist, told members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Some committee Democrats questioned Beach’s past work with right-leaning groups like
the Heritage Foundation and Trump’s past criticism of the BLS. Trump once called the
BLS monthly jobless report
“phony.”

“President Trump not only routinely ignores factual information and spreads misinformation,
but has explicitly questioned the validity of BLS jobs numbers when they were not
in his favor,” HELP ranking member Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said at the confirmation
hearing. “So if or when the economy begins to decline, I hope you will not succumb
to political pressure and put data and statistics ahead of the president’s ego.”

Beach, currently the vice president for policy research at George Mason University’s
Mercatus Center, only fielded a handful of questions from the HELP panel Dec. 5 that
included promises to independence and efforts to grow data collection.

Most questions were directed to other nominees for positions with the DOL and the
Department of Education, including Scott Mugno, who was nominated to serve as assistant
secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Beach is
expected to get strong Republican support for his nomination.

Beach was also previously employed as the chief economist for the Senate Budget Committee’s
GOP office.

Measures to Thwart Political Influence

There have been efforts to invoke political pressure throughout the history of the
BLS, which was formed in late 1800s and eventually folded as an independent division
of the DOL. That includes efforts to speed up production of data sets.

But, the BLS has several measures like guidelines from the Office of Management and
Budget, in addition to its own internal statutes implemented to thwart political influence
and lessen chances of data manipulation, former BLS Commissioner Erica Groshen told
Bloomberg Law Dec. 5.

“All of these things give it a set of practices that are quite mundane but protect
it from political influence and from the appearance of political influence,” said
Groshen, who was the BLS head during the Obama administration.

She described the BLS “in some ways is like a factory” with set deadlines and “clearly
defined rules” that maintains the integrity of the data.

“Any attempt to deviate from that would be very noticeable to many people,” Groshen
said.

Changing Efforts to Collect Data

HELP Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) described Beach as “well-equipped” to lead
the BLS due in part to his work history. Alexander did question how Beach would institute
new methods to collect data.

“As fewer people have landlines and more use cell phones and social media to communicate,
it’s getting harder to reach people in order to obtain these figures,” Alexander said.
“There’s also the challenge of how do you engage with the public on these figures
without seeming like we are cherry-picking the best results. Data itself is non-partisan.”

Beach later responded that he was committed to discovering means to continue the work
of the BLS, which would include “building innovative statistical and model-based tools
that advance our understanding of how public policy affects social and economic activity.”

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